Hey, there has been a lot of work over the past decade to get better support for Hybrid Laptops, Laptops that ship with an integrated GPU that is used by default and a more powerful dedicated GPU that is used on-demand some of this work includes: - switcheroo-control to query GPU information[1] - the PrefersNonDefaultGPU key added to the XDG Desktop Standard [2] - GNOME and KDE adding facilities to give users the ability to use multiple GPUs on demand [3]
sadly this hasn't worked out perfectly for a few reasons specifically: - the specificaton gives two different definitions of what the key should do - Desktop developers went with the "a GPU other than the default" definition - Application developers went with "a more powerful discrete GPU" definition this has created the problem that applications, taking Blender as an example, have set this key in hopes of it starting with a more powerful GPU, as one would expect for 3D modeling software and while it achieves that on the systems it was designed for, it falls apart when used on something like a Desktop where its common to have a dedicated GPU and an integrated GPU as part of the CPU. While this isn't a big problem in some cases in others it can cause applications to completely malfunction making it unclear to users what is happening. Taking Steam as an example, on my Laptop it crashes when started under the discrete GPU and while this is a more extreme example this could also occur with other applications. With all that, I'm a bit unsure how to move forward with this fixes have been contributed upstream[4][5][6][7] however this work has largely gone nowhere yet while end-users continue to be exposed to the broken behavior some packages in Fedora have decided to remove this variable There are at least twos Fedora packages that have removed the key themselves to address bug reports of the wrong GPU being used[8][9], other maintainers will have to check for themselves if they want to adopt this themselves, I'm currently approaching a bunch of deevelopers to convince them to remove the key, so it might not even be needed. I hope this information helps someone and that one day Fedora will properly function on multi-GPU systems. Jan P.S. sorry if this is a bit rambly, this email has almost been two years in the making [1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/switcheroo-control/ [2] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/recognized-keys.html [3] https://www.hadess.net/2016/10/dual-gpu-integration-in-gnome.html [4] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/switcheroo-control/-/merge_requests/69 [5] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/merge_requests/3193 [6] https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/kio/-/merge_requests/1556 [7] https://github.com/linuxmint/xapp/pull/178 [8] https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/xonotic/c/eca22baae61b51566cbcbc202a2d59c640ddbb59?branch=rawhide [9] https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/supertuxkart/c/8e143f6cd414e7f9559565f920a9b30b72cfc452?branch=rawhide -- _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
